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Bias, Rationality, and Mental Disorders: the Case for Epistemic Equality

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Bias, Rationality, and Mental Disorders: the Case for Epistemic Equality Bias, Rationality, and Mental Disorders: The Case for Epistemic Equality Laura Reinhard Advised by Dr. Lauren Weis Department of Philosophy and Religion University Honors, Spring 2012 Abstract: in traditional epistemology, philosophers assume that rationality is a necessary condition of knowledge and true personhood. At the same time, they assert that certain people lack the ability to reason, discounting the perspectives of entire groups. This capstone project explores bias and rationality in relation to one such group: people with mental disorders. It begins by discussing different conceptions of rationality and notes their ambiguities. By carefully examining some psychiatric conditions—e.g., depression and monothematic delusions—the capstone argues that many people with mental disorders meet the criteria for rationality; therefore, philosophers should not assume that a psychiatric diagnosis precludes rational understanding. Ultimately, the capstone proposes a radical form of epistemic equality that restores the dignity and philosophical privileges of people with mental disorders. The relationship between philosophy and psychiatry is complex and illuminates two different intellectual approaches to investigating the human condition. This paper seeks to investigate a point of intersection between the two: the questions raised by cognitive abnormalities in regards to knowledge. It begins by providing a brief sketch of epistemology’s development over time—a daunting task, to be sure—as grounds for considering the importance of reason. I then examine the use of reason in diagnostic criteria and consider depression and monothematic delusions as examples of mental disorders. Finally, I make the case that people with cognitive abnormalities, such as mental disorders, fulfill the criteria for rationality and that their perspectives are valuable to philosophy and psychiatry. Reason and the History of Philosophy Philosophers with epistemological concerns have often been preoccupied with what makes someone a knower—that is, capable of acquiring knowledge. For over two thousand years, one of the most consistently cited criteria has been the ability to reason.1 Reason was often defined in relation to other antithetical qualities: one author observes “a longstanding philosophic tradition that opposes reason and passion and attributes madness to an excess of the latter.”2 Moreover, rationality is considered “the mark of humanity” and is privileged in philosophical accounts.3 This association between reason and humanity began with Aristotle, who identifies rationality as the distinguishing characteristic of men when he declares that “a man is a rational 1 For purposes of clarification, I should note that this paper defines rationality as the ability to reason; hence, “rationality” and “reasonableness” are treated as synonyms. Some authors, such as M. Lane Bruner, distinguish between the two concepts. 2 James Phillips, “Madness of the Philosophers, Madness of the Clinic,” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 16 (2009): 313, http://search.proquest.com.proxyau.wrlc.org/docview/218780822. 3 Licia Carlson and Eva Feder Kittay, “Introduction: Rethinking Philosophical Presumptions in Light of Cognitive Disability,” in Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Licia Carlson, Metaphilosophy Series in Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 1. animal.”4 It is also worth noting that, for Aristotle, females belong to the genus of non-human animals,5 so the ability to reason is exclusively the purview of males. The gendering of reason— and the tendency to deny epistemic equality to certain groups—is intertwined with the history of philosophy. For example, the ancient Greek idea of reason as “a clear, determinate mode of thought” was inextricably linked to maleness.6 The designation of certain groups as inherently more reasonable has far reaching implications, as I will illustrate. Its gendered subtext aside, reason plays an important role in some of the most preeminent philosophers’ epistemological theories. For Plato, “Knowledge involved a correspondence between rational mind and equally rational forms.”7 Therefore, individuals who lack rational minds have muddled perceptions of the world, since they are only capable of seeing the façade of matter. Indeed, Plato’s philosophy reflects the Hellenistic idea that reason permeates the physical world, although he clarifies that matter has no place in our rational cosmos.8 His conception of mind-matter dualism9—which positions the rational mind and illusory, non-rational matter in opposition to each other10—constitutes a vastly important intellectual legacy.11 This division is reflected in other parts of Platonic doctrine: for example, in his understanding of the human soul.12 According to one interpretation, Plato’s tripartite soul even reveals a “philosophic vision 4 Robert Ackermann, Theories of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1965), 66. 5 Aristotle. “From the Metaphysics,” in Theories of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction, by Robert Ackermann (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1965), 92-93. 6 Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 3. 7 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 4. 8 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 4-5. 9 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 5. 10 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 6-7. 11 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 7. 12 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 18-19. of madness as an overcoming of the rational part of the soul by the appetitive side.”13 The Platonic organization of the world into discrete categories—rational and non-rational, mind and matter, intellectually transcendent and appetitive—is key to understanding his theory of knowledge and peculiarly ordered universe. Such was Plato’s influence on Aristotle that despite the differences between their philosophical doctrines, the latter experienced a great transformation of thought in regards to the mind-body relationship.14 The similarities between master and pupil are significant enough that together they exemplify “the ancient type of rationality,” “one that appeared from the transformation of the myth to logos.”15 Specifically, both philosophers use systems of categorization that organize things according to quality, although such a system is clearly more evident in the writings of Aristotle. In fact, “Even though the distinction between knowing and valuing had already been made, the hierarchy of values was syncretically identified with the realm of ideas (Plato), and… thinking with the supreme good (Aristotle).”16 However, Aristotle goes a step further in his classification, distinguishing between things like practical political knowledge and theoretical or scientific rationality.17 In keeping with Plato’s mind-matter dualism, Aristotle’s division of knowledge itself fits neatly with his teacher’s philosophical tendencies and method of ordering the world. 13 Phillips, “Madness of the Philosophers,” 314. 14 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 7-8. 15 Vaclav Cernik, Jozef Vicenik, and Emil Visnovsky, “Historical Types of Rationality” (paper presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts, August 10- 15, 1998), http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Scie/ScieVisn.htm. 16 Cernik, Vicenik, and Visnovsky, “Historical Types of Rationality.” 17 Cernik, Vicenik, and Visnovsky, “Historical Types of Rationality.” See also M. Lane Bruner, “Rationality, Reason and the History of Thought,” Argumentation 20 (2006): 193, doi: 10.1007/s10503-006-9008-9. Of course, Aristotle transcends his role as Plato’s pupil by producing writings of great intellectual depth, and his legacy includes unique contributions to our understanding of reason. For example, Aristotle radically reinterprets Plato’s idea of the forms: Plato’s formal principles, Aristotle commented, were rightly set apart from the sensible. But he repudiated Plato’s development of this insight into a dualism between a realm of change, apprehended through the senses, and a different realm of eternal forms. Aristotle brought the forms down from their transcendent realm to become the intelligible principles of changing, sensible things.18 The significance of Aristotle’s reinterpretation lies in its impact on epistemology. He removed knowledge from its Platonic exile in the formal realm and suffused it throughout the material world; thereafter, impermanent and sensible objects became intelligible.19 Aristotle’s position marks the disintegration, however slight, of the rigid divide between the rational and non-rational domains. Further repudiation of Plato is found in book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics when Aristotle clearly lays out a theory of human reason, including a differentiation of its types. The most important aspect of this theory is its pluralism: it emphasizes a rational capacity known as aletheúein, translated as “hitting upon truth,” but notes that truth itself has a variety of guises.20 Such an acknowledgment reflects a great deal of flexibility in Aristotle’s theory of knowledge and perhaps even a rejection of the truth as singular, fixed, and eternal. Thus, the two most influential Hellenistic philosophers set out complementary—and, occasionally, contradictory— visions of the ability to reason and its applications in the pursuit of knowledge. The significance of their legacy is evident in epistemology and in the writings of all the philosophers who followed. 18 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 8. 19 Lloyd, Man of Reason, 8-9. 20 Herbert Schnädelbach, “Transformations of the Concept of Reason,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice
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